Why Does God Allow Suffering?

Introduction: The question of evil is perhaps the big question. Since before recorded history, humans have struggled to reconcile three truths: (1) God is good, (2) God is all-powerful, and (3) evil and suffering are real. Justo L. González and Zaida Maldonado Pérez write,

- Atheists use the existence of evil in order to deny the existence of a good and powerful God.

- Some try to deny the existence of evil - Christian Science - It is a figment of our imagination.

- Finally others limit God’s power, that in some way God can not illiminate suffering and evil in our world

7-God is Good All The Time.

8-11

Job 42:1–5 NIV

Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.

12 - God Is A Mean Kid - Movie Clip from Bruce Almighty at WingClips.com

The role of Free Agency - It is not really a loving relationship if it is coerced.

Example - Buddy makes you come to him some of the time. Doesn’t always listen to our instruction, but we love that dog.

God as the Creator as the Definition of Good

Evil as the absence of Goodness

Evil requiring the Good to corrupt.

Different Kinds of Evil - Suffering

Job’s Friends

Consequences of Evil - Agency of our own sin, others sin against us, The Enemy.

The Enemy in Job - Bet with God....

Quote from Jordan Peterson - People do not grow to their full potential without some adversary. It’s cruel of God, unless he believes that we can overcome.

Job and God both insist that Job is innocent. He has overcome - This points us to Christ who overcomes on our behalf.

Living in a wild world - Natural Disasters

- God made the world to replinish itself

Goldi-locks zone of the earth

The Garden Story and the New Heaven story show us a God whose design is to hold back and protect from Natural Disasters - With sin and our rebellion the Lord withdraws some of his General Grace.

The difference between Hurt and Harm.

Root Canal - All things must work to the good of those who love Him. - Not all things are good, but he works all things.

13 - God is All-Powerful.

After Bruce Almighty - “Yes” to all prayers.

What if God did use his power to destroy all evil and suffering. We have a test case in this in the Bible.

14-16

Genesis 6:5–7 NIV

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

17-18

Genesis 8:21–22 NIV

The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

19 - The Noah Story as an experiment of God using all his Power to eradicate evil in a day.

- This story does set up the problem. If God is going to be all Good, and All Powerful, and Eradicate Evil, it has to come by some other means.

Abraham - Israel - pointing to Jesus (death & resurrection) - to his coming again

20 - God is Eradicating Evil and Suffering from His World.

Story about Ben, and getting pokes

What do you think you understood back then? Death?

What did it mean to you that we were with you?

Do you remember giving me your pain?

What did the experience do for our relationship?

The difference between Hurt and Harm.

This trajectory of redemption, of God taking the suffering and consequences of humanity’s evil upon himself, culminates in Jesus. Here we find God not suffering with us in story or liturgy, but in flesh and blood. In one of his parables, Jesus explains God’s patience in the face of suffering, his ability to play a long, long game.

The Bible ends with a vision of God’s complete goodness joining fully and eternally with our world, with God wiping away every tear (Revelation 21:1–5). As we wait for God’s plan to come to fruition, we have God’s goodness to sustain us in hope and faith. As we acknowledge that we are both the wheat and the weeds in God’s field, let us trust in God’s character, God’s goodness, and God’s long-term plan of full redemption.

21 - How Can We Respond When We See Suffering?

Some people want the logical reasons to reconcile God’s goodness, power, and with evil and suffering.

Hebrews tells us God disciplines those he loves. We have something to learn or grow.

Satan is attacking us.

Israel was punished for its idolatry

Jesus suffered on the cross for our redemption - So for some sacrifice.

Paul suffered to be reminded of God’s grace - thorn in side.

Persecution

All of these are potential reasons, but which reason fits your particular suffering. Well that is often harder to know. - 9/11

Our response to each other is.

1.I don’t know - And even if I or God told you why, would you fully grasp it.

2. The Lord’s End game is for you not to suffer. - His will is not harm (not wanting anyone to perish), but hurt may experienced on the way to healing.

3. The Lord promises you his presence in your suffering.

4. The Lord has suffered on your behalf.

5. The Lord has told us how he will ultimately rid this world of suffering and pain - his patience

Conclusion: His appeal to us in the Gospel is to trust his Wisdom. That he is good, and he is using all of his power, and he will eradicate evil from his good world.

Illustrations:

Story about Ben, and getting pokes

Pastoral response vs reasoned respons.

Talk about these two approaches in Job.

The difference between Hurt and Harm.

Root Canal

Training - Up-Downs - To Grow us.

Different Kinds of Evil - Suffering

Consequences of Evil - Agency of our own sin, others sin against us, The Enemy.

Quote from Jordan Peterson - People do not grow to their full potential without some adversary. It’s cruel of God, unless he believes that we can overcome.

Living in a wild world - Natural Disasters

The role of Free Agency - It is not really a loving relationship if it is coerced.

Example - Buddy makes you come to him some of the time. Doesn’t always listen to our instruction, but we love that dog.

https://skitguys.com/videos/prove-it-to-me

Bruce Almighty from wingclips - God is a Mean kid, Yes to All Prayers, Love and Free Will,

1. The question of evil is perhaps the big question. Since before recorded history, humans have struggled to reconcile three truths: (1) God is good, (2) God is all-powerful, and (3) evil and suffering are real. Justo L. González and Zaida Maldonado Pérez write, “Every solution that has been proposed throughout history simply ignores or minimizes one of these three points. Atheists use the existence of evil in order to deny the existence of a good and powerful God. [Others] deny the existence of evil, attributing it to our imagination … claim that what appears evil from our perspective is not really such from the divine perspective. Some limit God’s power claiming that God had to create free human beings, and that this required the possibility of sin. Even though it would be very pleasant … to claim the opposite, the truth is that the Bible does not offer a solution to this problem.” They also say, “That neither philosophers nor theologians nor even the Bible itself offer a satisfactory explanation of evil should not surprise us. What makes evil such is precisely that it interrupts the order, that it breaks all harmony, that it has neither reason nor explanation. Were we able to explain it, it would no longer be the powerful and overwhelming mystery of iniquity that it is” (Justo L. González and Zaida Maldonado Pérez, An Introduction to Christian Theology [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002], 70).

1. The story of Job is one of the oldest in the Bible. In the face of extreme existential suffering and despair, Job looks to God and demands an answer to the question of evil. If he has sought God’s righteousness and lived a life of faithfulness and compassion, why has he lost everything? God himself appears and answers Job; yet even in dialogue with the Creator, there are no easy answers. God spends pages declaring his character: he is eternal, all-powerful, full of tender compassion for all that he has made. In response, Job does not have the answer he sought, but the only answer any of us can find to the question: we can trust our Creator and Redeemer. “The dramatic power of the book of Job attests to the reality that faith, beyond easy convictions, is a demanding way to live that thrives on candor and requires immense courage. Faith of this kind that pushes deeply beyond covenantal quid pro quos … is no enterprise for wimps or sissies. … At the outset of the twenty-first century, as things become unglued on a large scale, the artistry of the book of Job invites faith to face the dangers of a connection to a Creator God who is immense in glory but who offers no easy comfort. Such a practice of faith, if honest, may anticipate comforts and settlements here and there; mostly, however, life and faith in a disputatious mode do not shirk from truth-telling that offends friends who comfort and defies the God who self-congratulates” (Walter Brueggemann, An Introduction to the Old Testament: Canon and Christian Imagination [Louisville, KY: WJK Press, 2003], 302–3). With Job, we too are invited to trust in the character of God, in the face of suffering, in the face of questions that defy understanding in this life.

1. In the story of Noah and the flood, we see an ancient glimpse of God’s strategy toward evil. The story begins with humanity increasingly rebelling against God’s intended goodness: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them’” (Genesis 6:5–7). God decides to solve the problem of evil through destruction; because of our sinfulness, God will blot out life from the earth. But as we know, the plan only succeeds temporarily. The rains come and wash everything away—save for one family of each species (including Noah’s family)—but once the land is livable again, humanity goes right back to their wicked ways. Yet this time, God’s response shows a 180-degree change. Because humanity is evil, God promises to never destroy creation again. “The LORD said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease’” (Genesis 8:21–22). Instead, in the following pages God calls Abram and Sarai, births the nation of Israel, promises the Messiah, and ultimately sends Jesus. To destroy evil, God would need to destroy us. Instead, God—whom we see clearly feels the grief and compassion as any parent would—will work toward full redemption, taking the cost upon himself. At the beginning of the flood story, human wickedness convinces God to destroy all life. At the end of the flood story, human wickedness convinces God to never destroy all of life. This ancient Hebrew story is incredibly theologically rich!

1. This trajectory of redemption, of God taking the suffering and consequences of humanity’s evil upon himself, culminates in Jesus. Here we find God not suffering with us in story or liturgy, but in flesh and blood. In one of his parables, Jesus explains God’s patience in the face of suffering, his ability to play a long, long game. Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven like a field that has been sown with wheat, but weeds grow up in addition to the wheat. The farmer chooses not to remove the weeds, realizing that doing so would disturb the wheat as well. Instead, he waits until harvest, at which time he will gather the wheat and destroy the weeds. This video by The Bible Project’s Tim Mackie is a wonderful explanation of how Jesus demonstrates God’s plan for evil in this parable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz4eU8a_RhI. (One possible clip is 21:00–26:15, though there is much more worth mining in the video.)

1. The Bible ends with a vision of God’s complete goodness joining fully and eternally with our world, with God wiping away every tear (Revelation 21:1–5). As we wait for God’s plan to come to fruition, we have God’s goodness to sustain us in hope and faith. As we acknowledge that we are both the wheat and the weeds in God’s field, let us trust in God’s character, God’s goodness, and God’s long-term plan of full redemption.

1. For as long as life has existed, friends and enemies of God have searched for an understanding of a good, powerful God alongside the realities of evil and suffering. Countless generations—and the Bible—affirm that the answer we long for is unavailable to us right now; but our ancestors and Scriptures attest to something else as well: God’s character, goodness, faithfulness, and presence. God is present, right here, right here, in your suffering. God is a good, compassionate, loving parent who will nurture his creation to full redemption. He put his own life on the line as proof, as the down payment. We can trust God’s character during times of evil and pain. Will you trust God? Will you place your broken life in his compassionate hands?